“Yes, sir,” Scott responded instantly.
They rode down out of the foothill forests, over a thousand Charlemagnes each carrying a clan warrior. There was no need for concealment, they wanted the Starflyer to know they were there, so they sang as they trotted out across the veldt, a slow marching song that rumbled on ahead of them amid the dust their hooves kicked up. Such scouts the Starflyer had positioned along the road babbled frantically into their communications links and raced back to the safety of the Institute valley twenty-four kilometers away, chased by clan outriders.
Six hundred riders formed up a crescent shape with Highway One at their center where it reached the bottom of a shallow fold in the land. They blew up the small bridge across the stream, and parties of McSobels trotted down the road scattering mines on the concrete and across the land on either side. Mortar launchers and missile racks were dug in on the higher ground overlooking the road. The remainder of the warriors divided into groups of two hundred and withdrew from the road, loitering a couple of kilometers to the north.
There they all waited as the sun rose to transform the sky into its daily sapphire brilliance. The heat built around them, pressing the air into silence.
In the placid silence of midmorning, the Starflyer convoy hove into view. Thirty armored Land Rover Cruisers were interspaced by several larger trucks, three buses, and a couple of small fuel tankers. A squad of ten big BMW bikes growled along out in front, ridden by armor-suited figures. The big MANN truck was positioned two-thirds of the way down the line of vehicles, its force field rippling the air around the buffed-aluminum capsule.
The bikes slowed as they crested the top of the fold and saw the Guardians blocking the way ahead. Their heavy engines grumbled loudly as they approached at walking pace down the long slope. The rest of the convoy followed them cautiously down. A kilometer from the rubble of the little bridge, the whole convoy came to a halt.
Out on the lush veldt, the remaining clan riders moved forward, spreading wide until the Starflyer convoy was completely encircled. The first armored car appeared on Highway One, rumbling forward until it reached the group of Charlemagnes standing on the road a kilometer behind the convoy. Olwen braked to a halt. “Finally!” she hissed.
The armored car’s thick door hinged up, and Bradley stepped out. Ten meters away, the door on the second armored car was already open. The Paris team and Cat’s Claws hurried out onto the sun-baked concrete and stretched elaborately. Scott McFoster handed the reins of his Charlemagne to one of his lieutenants and walked over. He threw his arms around Bradley. “Dreaming heavens, it is good to see you, sir.”
“You do the clans proud, Scott. There are more here than I expected.”
“Aye, and many more would be here with them. I had to be firm, else we would have had babes and elders riding with us.”
Bradley nodded slowly, thinking of Harvey’s corpse in one of the Mazda jeeps. He looked down the mild incline to the convoy. The growl of their engines was clean in the still, humid air. When he raised his eyes to the south, he could just see the saddle in the foothills that was the Institute valley.
“We’d best be quick. It will try to push through as soon as it can. Are there any signs of reinforcements?”
“No movement around the Institute. We’ve lost a couple of scouts, which is to be expected. But the rest are still in place. Besides, we’ll see anything approaching.”
“How many troops can it have left in there?”
“It’s not been easy to track movements along Highway One these last few months. But I’m confident there can’t be more than a couple of hundred humans left in the Institute.”
“That’s good. We have some zone killers on the armored cars, which should take out some of the convoy before we even start close-quarter fighting.”
“Can they puncture the truck’s force field?”
“I’d imagine not, but we’ll find out soon enough. We also brought some powerful dump-webs that’ll help break it down.”
“In that case, we’re ready.”
“All right then, I’ll suit up and join you.”
Just for a moment Scott hesitated. “Of course.”
“Don’t worry,” Bradley said softly. “I won’t get in the way. Besides, our friends here”—his gesture took in the Paris team and Cat’s Claws—“have agreed to escort me to the Starflyer itself.”
Scott took in the bulky armor with a professional glance. “I don’t suppose anybody would consider loaning me one of those fine suits for a couple of hours?”
There were several chuckles from the blank helmets.
Bradley turned to face the mountains that guarded the western skyline. The tall dazzling white peaks jabbed high into the clear sky. There was no sign of any cloud, not a breath of wind.
“We’ve heard nothing from Samantha,” Scott said, following his gaze. “That could mean it’s started.”
“Yes. Of course. Are there shelters nearby?”
“We’ve allocated some caves. I’ve got McSobels installing force fields in them now.”
“Let’s hope that’s good enough. No one really knows how powerful we can get—”
“Hey,” the Cat said. “We’ve got incoming. Very weird incoming.” Her gauntlet pointed into the western sky.
No DNA from Earth’s dinosaur epoch had ever been recovered despite some very creative science applied to the problem. This clearly hadn’t deterred the Barsoomians in their aspirational genetic experimentation. Bradley’s jaw opened in silent astonishment at the shapes that swam out of the lucent sapphire of Far Away’s sky. The creatures were clearly modeled on petrosaurs, with wings that were scaled membranes stretched over long tough bones. Sunlight shimmered in oil-rainbow patterns across the leathery tissue as the wings beat in long steady movements. Lizard ancestry was apparent in the body, though Bradley suspected a lot of sequences derived from crocodiles had been wound into the creature’s genome. Certainly the giant wedge head looked ferocious, and the four legs had lethal black talons.
As they approached, swooping lower toward the veldt, he could see the cloaked figures of Barsoomians sitting astride their thick necks. Some kind of saddle straps were wrapped around their pale oyster-gray hide. There must have been over thirty of them in the flock, all keeping a healthy distance from each other.
The first one came in low beside the road, its wings sweeping fast, then twisting around to pound at the air in giant downdrafts. It settled fast, its stumpy legs bowing into a crouch. A head that was three meters long, most of it jaws and teeth, swung around to align big protuberant eyes on Bradley. Wings that must have had a total span of fifteen meters fluttered once, and folded back with lazy neatness against the creature’s flanks. It bellowed out a high ululation that made Bradley clasp his hands over his ears. The cry was taken up by the rest of the flock as they plummeted down on the veldt as if they were descending on prey.
“Cool,” the Cat declared. “Hey you, Scott, I’d swap my armor for one of them.”
Their arrival never even flustered the Charlemagnes, who held their ground stoically. It was their riders who were gawping around in stupefaction. A ragged cheer began for the Barsoomians.
Bradley watched as the leader dismounted, seemingly gliding down the big creature’s side. “Greetings,” he said. “We wondered if you would join us for this event. I always hoped you would.”
“Bradley Johansson.” The Barsoomian had a dulcet female voice. “Your return to this world is auspicious, as we foretold. I am Rebecca Gillespie, and this is my congregation. We are happy to give what aid we can, but you must know we are also here to safeguard the Raiel.”
The shadows inside Rebecca Gillespie’s hood thinned slightly as she turned to look at Qatux. Two Barsoomians who had dismounted were gliding toward the big alien that had lumbered down from the back of the truck it’d traveled in. Tiger Pansy stood beside it in a very paternal fashion, giving the gray-robed figures a suspicious stare. The Barsoomians bowed deeply to Qatu
x, whose smaller tentacles extended toward them with the tenderness of a priest administering a blessing.
“What is Qatux to you, then?” Morton asked, his voice heavy with derision. “Some kind of old lost god?”
Rebecca Gillespie rotated slightly so that the front of her hood faced Morton. “The Raiel neural structure is supreme of all the sentients we have encountered in the galaxy,” she said. “As such it deserves our utmost respect. One day, we hope and believe our DNA can be elevated to such levels. In the meantime we are content with whatever insight it cares to grant us.”
“You people need to get out more,” Morton said.
“Whatever the reason, we’re glad you’re here,” Bradley said hurriedly. “Er, what are these, exactly?” He nodded toward the huge avian creature Rebecca Gillespie had alighted from.
“To us, they’re king eagles; although the towns on the Iril Steppes already whisper rumors of dragons in the skies of Far Away.”
“Whatever, they’re very impressive. Are you going to fly into battle on them?”
“Good Lord, no, that would be insanity.” She reached behind her head, and pulled a rifle with a very long barrel out of its hidden sheath in her robe. “The Institute guns would find us easy targets. We will sharpshoot for you. These weapons will cut through an ordinary force field skeleton suit from a thousand meters.”
“That kind of support is most welcome.”
“Sir,” Scott called. “Movement at the Institute. Something’s coming this way. There’s a visual.”
Bradley scanned his virtual vision for the icon, and pulled the scout’s image out of his grid. The picture wasn’t high quality, but it showed him vehicles pouring out of the valley mouth.
“That must be every vehicle they’ve got in there,” Stig said. “Who the hell’s in them?”
“See if the scout can get a close-up,” Bradley said. He was disconcerted by the quantity of vehicles. The Starflyer would be truly desperate by now, but it was logical above all else.
The image blurred, and zoomed in on a pickup truck. Several dark shapes were wedged in the back. At first Bradley couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing; his mind simply rejected the profile. They can’t be here. But of course, Dudley Bose had discovered the Starflyer’s true origin. “Dreaming heavens,” he said fearfully.
“Motiles,” the Cat crooned joyously.
“There must be hundreds of them,” Morton said.
“Soldier motiles,” Rob said. “I think. They look different to the ones on Elan.”
“They’ll be the improved version,” Bradley told him flatly.
***
There had been some uncomfortable moments during the flight. Several of the Scylla’s hyperdrive systems threw up glitches that had to be dealt with immediately. Ancillary support equipment failed with dismaying regularity. Nigel had spent most of his waking hours troubleshooting, holding things together with patched programs and backup components. Otis and Thame had improvised a lot of procedures; flight experience and hugely detailed knowledge of the frigate allowing them to take near-intuitive shortcuts.
The reluctant ship had slowly been coaxed into producing a performance that matched the specifications its designers had originally promised. Nigel had gathered a great deal of satisfaction from wrestling the technology into shape. Hands on was the only management style that worked one hundred percent. Knowing that a single mistake would leave them as a smear of outré radiation across the cosmos also helped to focus the mind to an astonishing degree.
Now they were closing on Dyson Alpha, he pulled the sensor display out of his virtual vision grid and studied it. It surrounded him with a speckled gray cube, illustrating the star as a small kink in the fabric dead ahead. Dyson Beta was off to one side, showing a larger twist as the transdimensional resonance skittered off the barrier’s surface. There was also a slim conical wake approaching Dyson Alpha. Tracking the Charybdis wasn’t easy; the detector mechanism had proved one of the least reliable systems on board. There had been a whole twenty-eight-hour period when they had lost the Charybdis entirely. Nigel had worked hard at adapting the unit’s software until the detector functioned near flawlessly. Certainly the last few hours hadn’t seen a single hiccup. He suspected the way they were slowly overhauling the Charybdis played a big part in that. There was now less than fifteen light-years between them.
“Have you decided what to do when we get there?” Otis asked.
Nigel’s virtual hand pushed the tracking display aside, compressing it back into his grid. “Not yet.” There was a rattled edge in his voice. Damnit, this was Ozzie!
“Ninety minutes until we get there.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We should have enough resolution to see if he heads for the homeworld or the Dark Fortress.”
Nigel shifted around on the couch’s padding. The voyage had been pretty miserable from a physical point of view: paste food, bloated sinuses, nauseous stomach, and teetering on the verge of claustrophobia the whole time. “You think it will track anything once they drop out of hyperspace?”
Otis gave a lame grin. “In theory.”
“This ship isn’t too hot on theory.”
“If he goes for the Dark Fortress he really will be trying to restart the barrier.”
“Possibly.”
“It means he isn’t a Starflyer agent.”
Nigel glared at his son. “I know that! That’s why I’ve come with you.”
“Sorry, Dad. It’s just…it’s Ozzie, you know.”
Nigel felt more than a little pique at the reverence in Otis’s voice. “Have you ever actually met him?”
“No. But you used to tell us about him all the time when we were young.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why it will be my hand on the trigger if it’s to be done.” He couldn’t help yawning, not that he slept well in freefall. “Let’s get ready. I don’t want to be distracted on our approach. Thame, load the nova bomb into the launch tube, I’ll authorize its activation.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nigel followed the procedure through the ship’s schematics. There was a problem getting the missile out of the magazine, but Otis did something to the handling mechanism to correct the flaw. Green symbols appeared when it was loaded and primed.
“Mark taught me that trick,” Otis said. “It’s to do with balancing the electromuscle.”
Nigel ignored the reproachful tone. There was something innately appealing about Mark, a human lost puppy. “Initiate the neutron lasers,” Nigel said. “Thame, you’re handling short-range defenses.” When he checked the timer, Dyson Alpha was seventy minutes away.
***
The jeeps had cleared Stakeout Canyon when they began to pick up the scattered fragments of Johansson’s reply. Paula programmed her array to piece together the vocal snippets as they repeated again and again. Static crashed out of the speakers as she played the message. It was a little bit longer and cleaner each time. By the fifth time there was no mistake.
“Is it him?” Rosamund asked. “Did you tell Renne that?”
“Yes.” Paula stared through the jeep’s curving windshield. The headlight beams were flowing over the blank, shiny surface of sand and shale as the sleek vehicle raced for cover. She thought the eastern horizon might be slightly lighter. The ache had almost gone from her limbs now, but she felt desperately tired, as if she hadn’t slept for months.
“So Adam contacted Oscar,” Rosamund said. “Does that help?”
“It makes a lot of sense, especially the why of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Adam knew Oscar wasn’t the Starflyer agent. If Oscar had been, then he would have captured Adam and taken him for interrogation as soon as Adam made contact; Adam would have been totally unprepared.”
“Then why didn’t he just tell us?”
“He was protecting Oscar.”
“From whom?”
“Me. Turn around.”
Rosamund shot her a
startled look. “Do what?”
“Turn around.” Her virtual hands fluttered over icons, trying to contact Oscar. The handheld array didn’t have the range, not with the canyon wall blocking them. “I have to get back there.”
“We haven’t got time!”
“Stop the jeep. You can get in with Jamas or Kieran. I’ll drive back myself.”
“Oh, dreaming heavens!” Rosamund wrenched at the wheel, sending the jeep into a skid-curve. It shook wildly as it chased the turn.
Paula gripped the seat, thinking they were going to flip over.
“What’s happening?” Kieran demanded.
“Oscar’s in the clear,” Rosamund said. “We’re going back.”
“What for? The storm’s going to be here in twenty minutes.”
The jeep had now completed its turn, nose pointing back toward Stakeout Canyon. Rosamund floored the accelerator. “I don’t know.”
“What?” he asked incredulously.
“I have to ask Oscar some questions,” Paula said. “I should be able to find out which of the other two it is.”
“Then what?”
“We might be able to reach the Starflyer agent in time to prevent them from flying. It won’t take much. Your ion carbines can easily disable a hyperglider.”
“But we wouldn’t get clear,” Rosamund growled. “The storm is at its worst in Stakeout Canyon. These jeeps couldn’t take the beating it’d give us in there.”
“I said I’ll drive myself.”
“No you don’t. You can barely stay conscious.”
“Thank you,” Paula said. She flopped back into the seat, and began thinking of the questions she needed to ask.
“Even if we don’t reach the traitor’s hyperglider, the other two will be warned,” Rosamund said. “We have to give them that.”
“It might be enough,” Paula agreed; she could sense the woman’s need to justify what they were doing, the courage she gained from the cause. “I don’t know what the agent is planning on doing. A kamikaze in the glider, possibly, or pushing the others off Aphrodite’s Seat.”